Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J.:- The dynamics of the writ jurisdiction and the potential for affirmative court action, as part of remedial jurisprudence, constitute the key thought which animates the ultimate decision and direction we give in this couple of cases which have come up by Special leave and under Art. 32 to this Court, aware as we are of a host of like proceedings which pend in the High Court.

2. The State of Kerala is the appellant in the Civil Appeal and 1st respondent in the Writ Petition but the collective litigation springs from a tradtitinal type of action and typical kind of relief granted in exercise of its writ jurisdiction by the High Court striking down a transitory scheme of admission to the medical colleges of the State evolved by the Government but invalidated by the High Court on the ground of discrimination in the distribution of seats among the eligible students drawn from two disparate regions of the State. Of course, instant repercussion of the decision is apt. to be comfusion in the admission to the academic courses which have hardly commenced already and this desperate situation has driven the Government to this Court seeking reversal of the Judgment under appeal. Law promotes order, not anomie.

3. Any incisive study of the exercise of the writ power in India may reveal that it limits its action to quashing or nullifying orders proceeding on a violation of law, but stops short of a reconstruction whereby a valid scheme may replace a void project. This is no reflection on the High Courts ruling but is symptomatic of an obsolescent aspect of the judicial, process, its remedial shortcomings in practice and the need to innovate the means, to widen the base and to organise the reliefs so that the court actualises social justice even as it inhibits injustice. This community perspective of the Justice System explains why we have resorted to certain unusual directions and have shapped the ultimate complex of orders in these proceedings in a self-acting package. With this exordium we proceed to narrate briefly the necessary facts and developments revelatory of the course of events and the cause of action, the impact of the High Courts judgment and the compulsions which have brought the State in appeal to this Court.

4. The Kerala State, notwithstanding its striking demographic, cultural, linguistic and political integrality and educational advance, has certain historical hangovers of academic disparity and developmental mal-distribution which have survived for two decades as this case testifies. We are not concerned with the etiological enquiry into this malady but recognise it as a reality since the authentic materials from Commission reports and prior rulings of the High Court concurrently so establish. Broadly speaking, this composite State may be dichotomised as Travancore-Cochin and Malbar regions woven into one fabric by the States Reorganisation Act, 1956. Gaping disparities of development cannot be wished away by political fusion into one State and determined efforts at equalisation of human conditions, economic and cultural, alone lend living. validity to geopolitical homogeneity. Malbar being admittedly laggard in the educational field, the State endeavovred to wipe out this weakness by starting or supporting new colleges in this neglected segment; and one such institution was the medical college at Calicut. Indeed, the drive to upgrade the educational status of this backward region persuaded the State to set up the Calicut University to which were affiliated all the colleges in that Cinderella area, including the Calicut Medical College. An adjoining district, Trichur, was also tacked on, for convenience, maybe.

5. The cynosure of attention in this litigation is the scheme of admission to Medical Colloges in the State; and so we may adjust the forensic lens to focus on the struggle for seats in the four medical colloges in the State-all-run by Government but providing for five hundred and odd stude